I tidigare artikel som ni kan läsa här skrev Dan Hardy på Twitter att matchen mellan Chael Sonnen vs Tito Ortiz såg uppgjord ut. Hardy antydde att matchen var mer ”koreograferad än en Brittany Spears konsert”. Hardy har sedan uttalandet fått utstå en hel del kritik och svarar nu kritikerna. Den tidigare titelutmanaren i weltervikt hade följande att säga genom ”The MMA Hour”.
You’ve got to understand, I was being fatuous at the time. It was a rather flippant comment, but watching the whole build-up, and I’ll give you exactly my perspective, from an analyst’s point of view. I saw Chael Sonnen selling this awesome story about how much it meant to for him to beat Tito, and the whole family thing came up.
When [Sonnen] got in there, he did a very, very basic single-leg takedown, which even me with awful takedown defense could have stopped, and I’ll allow Tito’s the bigger man, but Chael’s been watching him his whole career,” he said. He’s been planning on fighting Tito for his whole career, so surely he would have prepped for that. Second of all, just the progression that he allowed Tito to get to mount, and the lack of defense of the arm. I mean, there was no hand fighting at all. And then the finish of the choke, it wasn’t even around his neck.
If you put your own head in that same position when you watch the fight, it’s silly to believe that…there’s a space, on the right side of his face, between the right side of your face and your right shoulder. And anybody who’s been in that situation and that position knows that it’s uncomfortable, yes, but it’s not a choke and it’s not a tapping position.
Hardy menade senare att det fanns två alternativ till varför Sonnen ”gav upp” i matchen. Det ena menade Hardy att motivationen att fightas inte finns där längre för Sonnen, det andra rörde Sonnens tidigare avstängning där han blivit tagen för dopingpreparat.
Those are the two conclusions I’ve come to, and I don’t know which is more disappointing, because I was really excited to see him have a few more fights. I mean, there’s talk about Wanderlei Silva out there and stuff. But if that’s the version we’re going to see, I’m just not interested. I’d rather see Tito come back and have a few more fights, because he looked like he was in better shape and wanted to fight
Vidare sade Hardy att han tar tillbaka sitt uttalande om att matchen skulle vara uppgjord men att han är mer besviken över hur Sonnen förberedde sig inför matchen.
No, I don’t think so, I don’t think Bellator had anything to do with it, and I’m not necessarily saying the fight was contrived in any way. That was just my first reaction when I saw it because I couldn’t think of any other way that Chael would have rolled over like that. And then giving my perspective of the fact that Bellator brought him in basically as a mouthpiece to draw in an audience, but I just never got the impression that they expecting him to do anything athletically. I mean, he’s 40 years old, and he’s been retired for a time. From my perspective it seemed like he was there to kind of give Tito this big boost, and he just looked like he didn’t want to fight
And in a situation like that, where you’ve got a half-finished submission and you’re squeezing and the guy’s tapping, if I was Tito I would be annoyed at Chael. Because he sold Tito this story that he was going to show up and give him a good fight. And Tito showed up ready. He looked like he was as good a shape as when he was fighting in the UFC in his prime, if not better. I thought he looked leaner. I thought he looked quicker. You know what I mean? So I think there was an element of disappointment for Tito there that he’d given up so quickly. Because he squeezed that on a bit tighter when he realized he was tapping. I’d have probably done the same thing if I knew the guy was tapping and he wasn’t really hurt.
Dan Hardy har själv haft tankar att komma tillbaka till oktagonen men är just nu anställd som expert-kommentator. Någon planerad match för Hardys del har inte blivit annonserad.
